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TRUST OUR ARMY 
TO SPOILSMEN ? 


A PAPER RKAD 


AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF 


i he National Civil-Service Reform League 


AT BALTIMORE, MD. 


DECEMBER 16, 1898, 


CHARLES J. BONAPARTE. 


PUBLISHED FOR THE 

NATIONAL CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM LEAGUE, 
1898. 

















Publications of the National Civil-Service Reform League 


Proceedings at the Annual Meeting of the National Civil-Ser¬ 
vice .Reform League, 1882 , with address of the President, George 
William Curtis. Per copy, 8 cts. 

The same, with address of the President, for ’ 84 , ’ 85 , ’86, ’ 87 , 
’ 89 , ’ 90 , ’ 91 , ’ 92 , ’ 93 , ’94 ’ 95 , ’ 90 , ’97 and ’ 98 . Per copy, 

3 cts. 

Civil-Service Reform under the present National A dminis tration. 

By George William Curtis. (Address of 1885.) 

The Situation. By George William Curtis. (Address of 1886.) 

Party and Patronage. By George William Curtis. (Address of 1892.) 
Civil-Service Reform and Democracy. By Carl Schurz. (Address 
of 1893.) 

The Necessity and Progress of Civil-Service Reform. By Carl 

Scnurz. (Address of 1894.) 

Congress and the Spoils System. By Carl Schurz. (Address of 1895.) 
Encouragements and Warnings. By Carl Schurz. (Address of 1896.) 
The Democracy of the Merit System. By Carl Schurz (Ad¬ 
dress of 1897.) 

A Review of the Year. By Carl Schurz. (Address of 1898.) 

Civil Service Reform as a Moral Question. By Charles J. Bonaparte. 

(1S90.) 

The Influence of the Spoils Idea upon the Government of 

American Cities. By Herbert Welsh. (1894.) 

The Reform of the Consular Service. By Oscar S Straus. (1894.) 
The Interest of the Workingman in Civil-Service Reform. By 

Herbert Welsh. (1895. ) 

T^e Appointment and Tenure of Postmasters. By R. H, Dana 

(1895. i 

The Republican Part;/ and Civil-Service Reform. By Henry 
Hitchcock. (1897.) 

The Democratic Party and CiviJ-Servic Reform. By Moorfield 

Storey. (1897 ) 

An open Letter to Hon. C. H. Grosvenor, in reply to recent at¬ 
tacks on the Civil Service Law ned Rules. George McAneny. 
G897.) 

The Need and Best Means for Providing a Competent and Stable 
Civil Service for Our New Dependencies. By Dorman B. 
Eaton. (1898.) 

Constitution of the National Civil-Service Reform League. 


Good Government: Official Journal of the National Civil-Service 
Reform League. Published monthly at 54 William St.., New York. 
One dollar per year. Ten cents per single copy. 


For othe:- publications, see third page 





CAN WE TRUST OUR ARMY 

v- 

TO SPOILSMEN ? 


A PAPER READ 

AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF 

The National Civil-Service Reform League 

AT BALTIMORE, MD. 

DECEMBER 16, 1898, 


BY 

CHARLES J. BONAPARTE. 

u 


PUBLISHED FOR THE 

NATIONAL CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM LEAGUE, 
1898. 












4 









































*> 


































P. 

Publ. 

1 Je’04 
















Can We Trust Our Army To Spoilsmen? 


BY CHARLES J BONAPARTE. 


he hardworking, clear-headed old man, homely and caustic of 



1 speech, perhaps mildly cynical, but withal kind and gener¬ 
ous, who typifies in fable and caricature the American dettios y 
has, in truth, little liking for the job of a conquering hero ; the 
tall, white hat he wears, may be neither elegant nor picturesque, 
but it constitutes a far more comfortable and healthful and a 
prodigiously less expensive form of headgear than a laurel 
crown, and he already shrewdly guesses, 1 fear he may soon 
know from experience, that there is more than a fair chance of 
finding among the spoils of victory a choice albino of the 
genus elefas. But Uncle Sam has also a terrible propensity 
for seeing things as they are; for this, as a source both of 
strength and of weakness, have men of English speech been 
noted in all ages, in this have they differed most irom Spani¬ 
ards and Frenchmen and Germans, namely, that they live, not 
in memories or hopes, in ideas or theories, but in facts. It 
was emphatically a Yankee poet who said: 


“ Trust no future, howe’er pleasant; ” 


4 Let the dead past bury its dead ; ” 
“ Act, act in the living present,” 


“ Heart within and God o’er head.” 


Now our good Uncle Sam sees in the world of the living 
present a world wherein 

“ Strife comes with manhood as waking with day ; ” 
wherein the happiness, nay the continued life, of every man is 
the prize of an endless conflict, and wherein the weak go piti¬ 
lessly to the wall; wherein, among communties of men, the 
strong one armed holds what it hath secure, and the one not 
strong or not armed (for in modern times the terms tend daily 
to be more nearly equivalent in meaning) holds what it hath 
on sufferance until coveted by a stronger. He sees in the 




4 


world of Peace Societies and Arbitration Leagues the world of 
a future, a future doubtless pleasant, but no more to be trusted 
than is any of its kind. He sees this just as an Englishman 
could see that Richard Plantagenet, Charles Stewart or George 
of Hanover, by whatever name called, was yet only a man, 
with no less than his share of human fraility and human pas¬ 
sion, while to a Frenchman of the a?icien regime it was well 
nigh an article of faith to find in one annointed at Rheims a 
Saint Louis, even when named Louis XV. He sees further 
that in this world of the present, this world which, after all, 
God o’er-head has made, not in a world of the future seen by 
kindly men in day-dreams, he must live and do his appointed 
work; and, so seeing, if perchance some part of that work is 
to be done’ in arms, he will do it, not, indeed, with a light 
heart, but yet well, so well that there will be no need to do it 
over again. 

And he certainly does not believe a saying, now often quo¬ 
ted to various ends and in various senses, but true in none ; 
the American people will not be readily convinced that “ War 
is Hell.” I have said that, as a people, we do not live in 
memories, but some memories do enter into our national life ; 
it will be a changed nation which shall recognize in Washing¬ 
ton a mortal Beelzebub, and in tne men who left their homes 
to fight at Bunker Hill, suffer at Valley Forge, conquer at 
Saratoga or Yorktown, demons in training. In a great school 
of self-sacrifice and obedience there is little to recall the eter¬ 
nal prison house of rebellious spirits, crushed for their disor¬ 
derly ambition. 

I have said so much to show my own standpoint and to 
whom I would now speak ; I address, not those who think 
the counsels of Washington “ out of date ” or “ behind the 
times,” based upon principles of national policy which the 
greater statesmen of our day have “ outgrown; ” nor yet 
those who think Washington’s example one to be shunned and 
Washington’s profession one unworthy of a civilized or a 
Christian man, but those of my fellow-countrymen (numbering 
in my opinion certainly nine out of every ten of them) who 
have no longing for wars or conquests and view with distrust 
and misgiving our adoption of a meddlesome, visionary foreign 
policy which leads to these, but who know that, while men 
remain neither better nor worse than men, there will be times 


5 


when the sword must be drawn, and know, moreover, that 
often it can remain in the scabbard because, and only because, 
it is, and is known to be, sharp and ready to the hand which 
shall wield it. And, speaking to these, I propose to ask 
and answer two questions of profound interest to them as to 
me—Can the country’s safety and honor be trusted in the 
care of our present public men ? And, if these be unworthy 
of such trust, whence springs their unworthiness ? y f 

When Congress in April last demanded the immediate 
abandonment by the Spanish Crown of a territory which for 
four hundred years had formed part of its dominions, this 
action was, in at least one respect, absolutely without prece¬ 
dent in history; never before, so far as I know, had any gov¬ 
ernment, intentionally and with knowledge, adopted a course 
which made war inevitable and the moment of its outbreak a 
question of hours, with nothing which could be called by the 
widest stretch of imagination or courtesy an army to sustain 
the issue thus raised. Yet this was then literally true of the 
United States; our regular army consisted of less than 27,000 
troops, scattered over a territory as large as all Europe, and 
even these, as the event soon made painfully apparent, were 
wholly unprepared to take the field. As a so-called reserve, 
we had about 105,000 organized militia, on the whole a use¬ 
ful and meritorious force for its legitimate purposes (although 
its utility and merit varied greatly in different localities), but 
neither intended nor fit for active, and especially for foreign, 
service. Indeed, to call it a “ reserve ” at all, in any military 
sense, is hardly more appropriate than would be the same term 
applied to the police of our cities or the posses at the command 
of our sheriffs. As a body, it was not subject to the authority 
of the President or even of Congress, and, in fact, no company 
had a legal organization a foot beyond the borders of its own 
State. Moreover, it constituted at best, if not the literally 
raw, the less than half baked material of an army. The pro¬ 
gress of civilization has not yet enabled us to dispense with 
mothers, so students of biology should be ready to admit that 
there may be in males of the species homo sapiens a latent 
hereditary passion for millinery and mantua making, for which, 
in civil life, they can usually find only the imperfect gratifica¬ 
tion derived from footing bills; nor is it surprising that this 
should render the young'J male of the same animal prone to 


6 


perambulate in bright colored clothes and brass buttons, “ tot¬ 
ing ” (as our Aunties would say) guns and swords and other 
shiny things “ to dazzle and dismay.” All this is doubtless 
magnificent, especially to the heroes’ partners at the German, 
but it is not war; and if it be a school for war, it is hardly 
more than a kindergarten. 

From what I have just said, it must not be supposed for a 
moment that I am inclined either to undervalue our National 
Guard or to sneer at those of its members who formed the 
nucleus of our improvised army last Spring. With the First 
Congress, I recognize “ a well regulated militia ” as “ necessary 
to the security of a free State;” in the readiness wherewith so 
many thousands of our young men left their homes for a war, 
which, as I have reason to think, a large majority deemed un¬ 
necessary and unwise, in their cheerfulness and obedience un¬ 
der privations, all the harder to bear because plainly needless, 
and in the steadiness and gallantry displayed by substantially 
all of them who went into action, I see, perhaps, the most en¬ 
couraging and healthful symptoms of our national life. It is, 
however, no less true that when Congress rushed into a war of 
aggression, this country, containing seventy millions of people, 
had not twenty thousand available soldiers. 

A foreigner ignorant of the facts might conjecture from this 
astounding improvidence and levity that Congress did not ex¬ 
pect the outbreak of hostilities or was ignorant of the country’s 
plight or, perhaps, hesitated to sooner relieve this because un¬ 
willing to sustain the President in a warlike policy condemned 
by public opinion; in fact, Congress had been straining in the 
leash for months to make war inevitable despite the reluctance 
of both the President and the people, and one of the early 
measures introduced at its recent session was a bill to increase 
the regular army in time of war to a little over one hundred 
thousand men. For the consideration of this bill no time 
could be found during many weeks, while our Solons were re¬ 
lieving their pent-up bosoms of long diatribes against the 
Civil Service Law; at last it received attention only to be 
summarily rejected because some officers of the National 
Guard had (or were alleged to have) exhibited the almost in¬ 
credible ignorance, presumption and vanity to claim that they 
could do all the fighting there might be to do. Another bill 
to authorize the trifling addition of some one thousand six 


hundred men to the artillery, although finally passed, was de¬ 
bated and opposed as though peace had been assured for a 
century. 

A more plausible explanation, which will perhaps be one 
day added to the number of those lies made truth by History, 
is that Congress relied with confidence and reason on over¬ 
whelming naval superiority to give time for adequate military 
preparations after war had been declared. It is, in the first 
place, extremely doubtful whether more Senators or more 
Representatives than can be counted on one’s ten fingers had 
formed, or were capable of forming, any intelligent opinion as 
to the relative strength of Spain’s navy and of ours, or had 
ever given five minutes’ thought to the subject. It is to be 
noted, secondly, that in fact no such disparity of force existed, 
or, at all events, was supposed by competent judges to exist, 
when the war commenced. On the Continent most European 
experts thought the navies were not unfairly matched; some 
thought the odds, on the whole, a little against us. An expe¬ 
rienced and highly meritorious American officer, whose views 
I obtained, whilst predicting our victory, said the Spaniards 
had three really effective fighting ships to our one. Finally 
our politicians did not hesitate a few years since to offer grave 
provocations to Great Britain respecting a matter of no more 
moment than the Venezuelan boundary, with no thought of 
her immense naval strength, with no semblance of preparation 
for defence and with no controversy among themselves except 
as to which party was entitled to the greater credit for thus 
exposing the country to imminent risk of humiliating disaster. 

It may be worth a moment’s pause to fully realize the 
national danger involved in this incident, and which we 
escaped through no wisdom of our rulers, but solely through 
the wise forbearance of the government and people we so 
lightly challenged. Much is now said as to whether we should 
or should not persist in our “ isolation ” by those who forget 
that, in a military sense, this isolation is already, in great 
measure, a thing of the past. With our shores but six days’ 
space from the harbors of the Old World, the transportation 
hither of 50,000 troops would be a less task for the navy and 
mercantile marine of England than was that of General 
Ross’ brigade in 1814. Our present Secretary of War is said 
to have replied when asked, a year or more since, what we 


8 


should do if at war with one of the great powers: “ In thirty- 
days the United States could place in the field millions of men 
and back them up with a wall of fire in the shape of veterans.” 
Last summer, with this modest and judicious patriot in the 
War Department, not thirty, but sixty days after the war com¬ 
menced, more time, be it remembered, than separated the 
declaration from Sedan, far more time than separated the dec¬ 
laration from Sadowa, we placed in the field, not “ millions,” 
but barely sixteen thousand men, and so neglected these that 
a well-informed, if somewhat unfriendly, foreign critic could 
say and say truthfully : 

“ Here, at the end of the nineteenth century, one of the 
richest nations on earth, one of the most intelligent and one 
which poses as being amongst the most civilized, sends out a 
small army to fight, but shows herself unable either to feed 
the soldiers that fight for her, tend the wounded that bleed for 
her, or bury the dead that die for her.” 

In the light of this experience, I do not know, nor am I 
much interested to know, what General Alger may think on 
the subject, but I ask any one of my present hearers, I ask 
any intelligent and fairly educated American, had we become 
involved in war, as we became involved in controversy, with 
a power having, not merely 50,000 troops ready to embark at 
a week’s notice, but unquestioned command of the sea and 
almost unlimited resources in shipping, could any city of our 
seaboard have reasonably expected a better fate than befell 
Washington, could any have reasonably hoped to make so 
stout a defence as did Baltimore eighty-four years ago ? As 
for the General’s “ wall of fire,” it is formidable enough, no 
doubt, to the Pension Office; its “bricks” or “sparks” 
(whichever may be the proper metaphor) have levied huge 
contributions from our Treasury, but, like the Claudii, their 

. . . yoke has never lain on any neck but ours,” 

and it is quite safe to assume that it never will. 

The true explanation of this apparently inexplicable be¬ 
havior of Congress is disgracefully simple; its members (with 
some honorable exceptions, which but prove the rule) are indif¬ 
ferent to the prosperity, the dignity, the security of the coun¬ 
try they govern. Like Mr. Flannigan, of Texas, they might 
ask in astonishment, “ What are we here for ?” were it sug- 


9 


gested that they give time or thought to questions of diplo¬ 
macy or national defence, or anything except office-mongering 
and electioneering. Their hearts and lives are given to 
the task of quartering on the taxpayers for support as 
many as may be of their relatives and dependents and 
hangers-on of high and low degree, preferably such as are too 
lazy, stupid or vicious to support themselves; for anything else, 
unless it be the retention of their own places, they have but 
the leavings of their time and the dregs of their energy. This 
was curiously illustrated by their action respecting the additions 
to the clerical force of the War and Treasury Departments 
made necessary by the war. This increase was, of course, 
indispensable if the vastly augmented work of these depart¬ 
ments was to be properly performed, but their efficiency did 
not really interest Congress; what the members had at heart 
was the following clause in the Urgent Deficiency Bill, 
adopted as an amendment by the House of Representatives 
on June 20th last: 

“ The temporary force authorized by this section of this act 
and the clerical force and other employees appropriated for in 
the act to provide ways and means to meet war expenditures, 
and for other purposes, approved June 13, 1898, and the act 
making appropriations to supply deficiencies in the appropria¬ 
tions for the payment of pensions and for other objects for the 
fiscal year 1898, and for other purposes, approved May 31, 
1898, shall be appointed for a term not exceediug one year, 
as authorized, respectively, without compliance with the con¬ 
ditions prescribed by the act entitled “An act to regulate and 
improve the civil service,” approved January 16, 1883. 

In moving this amendment, Mr. Cannon, of Illinois, made 
the following statements : 

“. . . . Your committee on investigation found that it 
was not practicable to call into motion the machinery of the 
Civil Service Commission for the purpose of making these 
appointments. It was necessary to have the force and to have 
it at once. Further than that, we were told, Mr. Chairman, 
that the machinery of the Civil Service Commission could not 
be invoked without damage to the Commission itself and dam¬ 
age to the so-called Civil Service Reform, because it is not 
adapted to the employment of emergency or temporary 
people. And when you undertake to make it grind out 


IO 


something that it is not adapted to and not intended for, and 
which does not come within the alleged evils for which the 
law was originally passed, you do not improve the character 
of the employees you acquire under it, and you only work 
injury to the reform itself. Therefore, from every standpoint, 
we found it much better, after the very fullest investigation we 
could give to the matter, to report this provision in the pend¬ 
ing bill.” 

Every allegation of fact thus made was a falsehood. The 
Committee had not made “ the very fullest investigation ” on 
the subject; apparently it had made no investigation at all; 
certainly it had addressed no inquiry to the Civil Service Com¬ 
mission itself. It was perfectly “ practicable to call into motion 
the machinery of the Civil Service Commission for the pur¬ 
pose of making these appointments ;” indeed, they could have 
been thus made, not only far more satisfactorily, but also more 
rapidly than in any other way or than they were in fact. 
There were at the time thousands of eligibles on the registers 
of the Commission, and any desired number could have been 
certified for appointment within a few hours. It was absolutely 
false that a the machinery of the Civil Service Commission 
.... is not adapted to the employment of emergency or 
temporary people”; it has been used repeatedly for this pur¬ 
pose, and always with entirely satisfactory results; as instances, 
for several years the Railway Mail Service voluntarily selected 
its temporary weighers from the list of eligibles, and the tem¬ 
porary force of extra compositors employed in the Govern¬ 
ment printing office during the sessions of Congress are so 
chosen, more than a hundred being often appointed in a single 
day. Moreover, Mr. Cannon either knew what he said to be 
false or had made no attempt seriously and in good faith to 
learn the facts, whilst claiming to speak “ after the very fullest 
investigation.” 

However, our statesmen got the places for their henchmen, 
and a precious lot of incapables they foisted on the Govern¬ 
ment ! Some five hundred and sixty were appointed in the 
War Department alone. It is claimed on behalf of the 
Secretary of War that for the acknowledged incompetency of 
many among these five hundred and sixty he was not 
to blame; “ he was obliged to rely upon the representations 
made to him by those who sought appointments. It was 


impossible for him to make adequate inquiry into their 
qualifications.” Nevertheless, he could have filled their posi¬ 
tions with men whose “ qualifications ” had been ascertained 
by “ adequate inquiry the Civil Service Commission stood 
ready to furnish the names of thousands of men thus tested, 
and a resort to their registers, whilst not required , was yet not 
forbidden by the law, although it would have disappointed the 
selfish greed of those who framed this law. 

His excuse bears a close resemblance to that offered by the 
Surgeon-General for that deficiency in the care of the army 
which has most keenly touched the people. The same for¬ 
eigner whom I have already quoted says further: 

“All through the fighting of the army in Cuba there was a 
scandalous want of medical attendance. For this there was 
absolutely no excuse. Hundreds of medical men throughout 
the States had volunteered their services for the war.” 

Indeed, in his memorandum to the Investigating Commis¬ 
sion, General Sternberg says: 

“ The number of applications has been so great and the 
personal visits of applicants and their friends so numerous as 
to constitute a serious embarrassment in conducting the busi¬ 
ness of my office.” 

Yet, although he had to give up so much of his time to 
“ personal visits of applicants and their friends” (were there, 
perchance, a few Senators and Representatives and other 
influential politicians among these “ friends ”?), he admits that: 

. It has been impossible to make a careful selection, 
owing to the great pressure of business in the Surgeon-General’s 
office, and the urgency has been so great that it has not been 
practicable to have examining boards to pass upon their quali¬ 
fications.” 

Doubtless the “ urgency ” was great; the urgency, that is 
to say, of those men whose one thought in the nation’s extremity 
was to find berths at its cost for themselves or others in their 
interest; and “urgent” people of this kind with a “pull” 
would object strongly to “ examining boards to pass upon ” 
the “qualifications” of their proteges. Doubtless they would 
deem such boards “ un-American ” and “ Chinese.” Exami¬ 
nations of any kind are very distasteful to our statesmen. 
But the fruits of such “ urgency ” on their part, and of such 


I 2 

yielding to it on his part, were grim enough. In the words 
of my critic: 

“ There are times when blundering incompetence attains 
the dignity of crime. Those who were responsible for the 
management of the Army Medical Department have the blood 
of many of their fellow-countrymen to answer for. Sick men 
were hurried to their death by stupid mismanagement and the 
want of ordinary hospital care, while numbers of wounded men 
were practically murdered by neglect. No one who has not 
actually witnessed the scenes of this war can realize its tragedy.” 

As an instance of this “tragedy ” he adds : 

“Three days after the fight at San Juan the body of a 
man was found sitting up under a tree; his head had fallen on 
his right shoulder; his water bottle was at his side 
empty; in his right hand he held a photograph of a woman— 
evidently his wife, and in his left a photograph of a group 
of four children. He was shot through both knees, but 
had evidently been able to drag himself under the shade 
of the tree, and there waited for someone to stanch his wounds 
and attend to him; but, as was the case with so many others, 
nobody came.” 

General Sternberg says of cases such as this: 

“ It has not been the expectation of the medical depart¬ 
ment that every wounded man would receive immediately the 
attention of a surgeon.” 

Perhaps, then, three days is not an unreasonable time for 
him to wait, and, of course, it would be altogether captious to 
complain of the case reported by Captain Lee in Scribner's 
for October of a man shot through the stomach at eight in the 
morning, and left lying in a great pool of his own blood, with 
no care but that afforded by a badly wounded comrade, until 
one in the afternoon, and how much longer the narrator could 
not say—in all human probability until his death. It is noted 
by the writer whom I have so often quoted already: 

“ In General Shaffer’s official account there were eighty- 
one reported missing after the fighting in a few days about San 
Juan. General Shaffer significantly remarks that most of those 
may*be taken as having been killed.” 

He adds: 

“ I quite agree with him. They were killed—many of them 
were murdered by neglect.” 


3 


I have said of this writer that his bias is decidedly 
unfriendly towards Americans; nevertheless, I think few fair- 
minded people will question the justice of his general con¬ 
clusion thus expressed: 

“ Looking back at all the operations around Santiago, the 
Americans may feel proud of the bravery of their Regulars and 
some of the Volunteers, notably the Rough Riders. . 

The way in which men of all ranks, both Regulars and Volun¬ 
teers, bore severe privations without murmuring is beyond all 
praise; but, having said that, I think there is nothing else con¬ 
nected with the American Army of which the people of the 
United States should not feel thoroughly ashamed.” 

He adds: 

“When speaking about it to intelligent Americans I am 
always met with the same reply, ‘ that politics were at the 
bottom of it.’ ” 

He had previously remarked the frequency with which he 
had heard it said of volunteer officers : 

“ So-and-so got that place because he was very useful 
during the late campaign.” 

Adding: 

“ For a few days I was rather under the impression that 
the campaign referred to was the last Civil War, but then dis¬ 
covered that it was the late election campaign that was meant. 
Men were placed in responsible positions, not so much upon 
their qualifications as on account of the services they had 
rendered to their party. The disastrous results of this system 
have been evident throughout the war. The political bosses 
had the appointment of men to the highest positions of the 
army and the army departments.” 

And what he and others saw at Santiago was the ex¬ 
perience of competent observers elsewhere. Thus, in a very 
interesting unpublished narrative of personal experience at 
Chickamauga, prepared by an unusually well-informed and in¬ 
telligent volunteer, which I had the opportunity to examine, 
the writer asks; 

“ . . . . why a whole army corps should have been placed 
under the medical care of a man whose only recent profes¬ 
sional affiliations were those of a veterinary ? Were no com¬ 
petent surgeons to be found whose interest in humanity was 
undivided ? Or was this, after all, a case of pull ?” 


14 


Leaving this question to be answered by the Investigating 
Commission, he goes on to give many instances of obvious un¬ 
fairness and favoritism. Thus he says: 

“1 have seen in one hospital a fourth year student in 
medicine kept twelve hours a day for several weeks merely 
emptying and cleaning bed pans, while men who knew 
absolutely nothing of medicine or drugs were nursing. Under 
such a regime as this, the worst kind of neglect could arise, 
and often did. It was common talk at one hospital how one 
poor fellow lay in his cot with parts of his body already covered 
with maggots before the merciful hand of the Angel of Death 

ended his suffering on his bed of filth.Another 

case of injustice was in placing the son of one of America's 
greatest surgeons, who had been his father’s assistant, in charge 
of the ice-chest at a division hospital, where he handled milk 
and ice, while working in the typhoid wards were men who 
could not read a prescription, take a temperature or give a bath. 
Is it any wonder that under such conditions as these typhoid 
fever spread and increased ? With this lack of sanitary 
precautions, and with men often totally devoid of medical 
attainments put over the sick, it is fortunate that things were 
not much worse even than they were.” 

His conclusions deserve our careful consideration: 

“ Much of our lack of preparation, in the medical depart¬ 
ment as well as in every other department, grew out of the 
long-cherished idea that our situation insured national safety. 
And we never seriously contemplated a campaign beyond our 
shore line until this emergency arose. 'This, however, does not 
wholly explain the disastrous results growing out of disease. 
It is notorious that appointments were made without proper 
consideration of the candidate or of the work he was expected to 
do. It is beyond doubt that some of the appointments were 
made solely because of the influence those appointed were 
able to bring to bear through political channels. The feeding 
and clothing of this army, which represented the very flower of 
our population, and the care of our sick was sometimes 
entrusted to men who were absolutely untried and who had 
never shown that they possessed the requisite executive ability 
or special training. Even when the deadly emergency was 
upon us, the best available material was often allowed to 
remain unutilized, because less competent persons stood in the 



5 


way. Such a condition of affairs is an instance of the danger 
of the spoils system, and it is is also an arraignment of it.” 

Its “arraignment” is, however, yet more formidable when 
we consider the treatment of our army at the hands of the Com- 
mander-in-Chief, given the latter by the Constitution. The 
first duty to the army which Mr. McKinley was called upon to 
discharge was the choice of a fit man as Secretary of War; but 
how did he discharge that duty ? In other words, what 
manner of man did he choose ? And why did he choose 
him ? 

In the first place, he chose a man with a military record; 
this, be it remembered, he was under no obligation either of 
law, custom or public policy to do. The office is a civil, not a 
military one, and although in most European countries it is 
habitually filled by a soldier, the wisdom of this arrangement 
is by no means indisputable; the great “ organizers of victory” 
have been civilians. But if the President saw fit to select as 
the administrative head of the army a man with a military 
record, he was under a manifest obligation to choose one with 
at least a clear record, that is to say, with such a record as his 
own; it was equally indecorous and impolitic to place in 
authority over soldiers a man whom most soldiers regarded 
with suspicion and contempt, and such a choice was the more 
unpardonable on the part of one who had been a soldier, and a 
good soldier, himself. Now, General Alger, as a soldier, comes 
before the public somewhat as Hood’s Count came to marry 
Miss Kilmansegg, “not under a cloud, but in a fog;” he 
may have been treated with injustice, perhaps he was the victim 
of circumstances or else of prejudice or personal dislike, but I 
merely state notorious facts when I say that his service inthe 
Civil War had been marked by unfortunate incidents, subject¬ 
ing him to serious imputations, which may possibly have been 
unfounded, but none the less affected his standing with 
military men; and that he was further suspected, again perhaps 
unjustly, but on grounds, at least, plausible, of an attempt to 
misrepresent or conceal these incidents when an aspirant for 
the Presidency; and, finally, that, although he had some friends 
in the army, he did not enjoy its general respect and con¬ 
fidence. In studiously picking out a man of these antecedents 
for the place he thus filled Mr. McKinley showed, I will not 
say a defiance, but, at least, a disregard of professional opinion, 


differing widely in degree, but not in kind, from that exhibited 
by Charles X when he made the deserter of Waterloo his 
Minister of War. 

The Secretary was, moreover, certainly past his prime and 
of uncertain health, and was not known to possess, or, at 
least, had never exhibited, any conspicuous administrative 
ability, or any conspicuous ability of any kind. His 
selection might well seem as incomprehensible to a 
foreigner as the failure of Congress to make any preparation 
for a war which it did everything to provoke, but the explana¬ 
tion is neither more obscure nor more creditable. General 
Alger will probably have the Michigan delegation to “deliver ” 
in the Republican Convention of 1900, and he can do much to 
make the “ Grand Army vote ” serviceable both at primaries 
and at the polls; these reasons are no less sufficient to explain 
his retention; their weight is in no wise diminished by any¬ 
thing he has done or allowed to be done. 

Of his official record I say little, not because there is little 
to say, but because there is little need to say anything. Two 
incidents, however, are sufficiently characteristic to deserve a 
word of notice. He received a confidential official letter from 
Col. Roosevelt, written with the approval of the latter's 
immediate superior, on a matter of grave public interest; this 
confidential official letter he published, together with a silly 
and disingenuous reply on his own part, because he foolishly 
imagined that its publication would injure the political prospects 
of its writer; would “lay-out Teddy,” to use the words attributed 
to one of his confidants. This petty exhibition of senile spite 
did not “lay-out Teddy,” doubtless to the great surprise of the 
mighty mind which devised it, but it served to lay out very 
thoroughly, if any such process were needed, the few fragments 
of its author’s reputation as a man of honor. Together with 
the Adjutant-General of the Army he has been virtually accused 
by its ranking General of causing or permitting official com¬ 
munications to be garbled or suppressed in a published corres¬ 
pondence for the paltry and ridiculous purpose of misleading 
the public as to that officer’s relation to the Santiago cam¬ 
paign ; apparently because he also was supposed by one or 
both of them to have a political ambition, and to need 
“ laying-out ”; not only have the parties thus accused taken no 
steps to secure an official investigation of this charge, but the 


7 


President, seemingly in their interest, has carefully excluded 
it from the scope of the enquiry which he was at last goaded 
or shamed into ordering. Mention of the Adjutant-General 
here calls to mind a curious and significant episode. A special 
act to authorize his promotion was introduced in Congress, 
with, it was said, the cordial approval of the President. It 
may have been no more the fault of this officer that he was 
kept from the field than that he came from Ohio, but it 
seemed strange that a soldier who had never left Washington 
should be singled out for prompt and peculiar honor, especially 
when, to say the least, the administration of his office had not 
been either conspicuously successful or conspicuously popular. 
Here, again, however, the explanation is not difficult: like 
the Surgeon-General, he had been compelled to give up most 
of his time and strength, not to his legitimate duties, but to the 
solicitations of influential politicians for favors of all sorts, and 
so exhausting were his strenuous efforts to satisy their “ ur¬ 
gency ” that later in the summer he was said by the newspapers 
to be threatened with nervous prostration. 

Many thoughtful and patriotic citizens view with anxiety, 
indeed with alarm, the new and grave responsibilities imposed 
upon the United States as fruits of the late war. A gentleman 
for whom I have great respect recently wrote me that he 
regarded Civil Service Reform as a matter of altogether sub¬ 
ordinate importance compared with issues arising from these 
responsibilities. I could not agree with him ; I regard the 
thorough and practical realization of that reform in all 
branches of our government as no less indispensable to 
the nation’s safety and honor than to the nation’s tran¬ 
quility and morals. To have our army worthy of its duty 
and of its past, we must protect it, just as we must protect our 
judiciary and our schools and everything we prize, from the 
taint of “ spoils ” politics: on this condition only can the 
“ respectable establishment ” which Washington deemed essen¬ 
tial to our national defense be “ respectable ” in any sense of 
the term. Some, and among them some to whom we rightly 
look for guidance, fear lest, as with other republics both of the 
past and of the present, we may sacrifice our liberty and pros¬ 
perity to dreams of foreign conquest and military glory, lest 
the time come “ when every American workman shall carry a 
soldier on his back.” For me, that is not our peril; the 


8 


honest American of every condition in life, in my eyes, is a Sin- 
bad already, but his burden is a loathsome “spoils ” politician, 
reeking with the contagion of moral vileness. We must free 
our country from this miserable bondage; if that can be done, 
her soldiers will be in the future, as, after all has been said, they 
have always been in the past, those among her children of 
whom she has least cause to be ashamed. 



Publications of the New York Civil-Service Reform Ass'ft 


The Beginning of the Spoils System in the National Govern¬ 
ment, 1829 - 30 . (Reprinted, by permission, from Parton’s “life 
of Andrew Jackson.”) Per copy, 5 cts. 

Term and. Tenure of Office. By Dorman B. Eaton. Second edition# 

abridged. Per copy. 15 cts 

Daniel Webster and the Spoils System. An extract from Senator 
Bayard’s oration ; t Dartmouth College, June, 1S82. 

A Primer of Civil-Service Reform, prepared by George William 
Curtis. (English and German Editions.) 

Address of Hon, Carl Schurz in opposition to the bill to amend the New 
York Civil Service laws, commonly known as the “Black Act,” 
May 6. 1897. 

Report on the Operation of the “ Black Act.” March 21, 1898. 
Annual Reports of the Civil Se - vice Reform Association of New 
York for the years 1883-1393 inclusive, Per copy, 8 cts. 


MISCELLANEOUS. 

United States Civil-Service Statutes and Revised Rules of May 
8, 1896 . 

State Civil-Service Reform Acts of New York and Massachu¬ 
setts. 

Decisions and Opinions in Construction of the Civil-Service Laws, 

(1890) Per copy, 15 cts. 

The Meaning of Civil-Service Reform. By E. 0 . Graves. 

The Selection of Xiaborers. (In English and German Editions). By 
lames M. Bugbee late of the Massachusetts Civil-Service Commission. 
Report of Select Committee on Reform in the Civil Service 
(H. R.), regarding the registration of laborers in the United States 
Service. 

Report of same Committee regarding selection of Fourth-Clae* 
Postmasters. 

The Need of a Classified and Non-Partisan Census Bureau- 

Report of a Special Committee of the National League. (*898) 
George William Curtis. A commemorative address by Parke Godwin 
( Published by the Century Association). 10 cents per copy. 


(a charge is made only where the price is given.) 


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library of congress 



0 011 398 999 3 


PRESIDENT: 

CARL SCHURZ. 


SECRETARY: 

GEORGE McANENV. 


TREASURER: 

A. S. FR1SSELL. 


VICE-PRESIDENTS: 


CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, 
AUGUSTUS R. MACDONOUGH, 
RT. REV. HENRY C. POTTER, 
J. HALL PLEASANTS, 


HENRY HITCHCOCK, 
HENRY C. LEA, 
FRANKLIN MACVEAGH, 
RT. REV. P. J. RYAN, 


WILLIAM POTTS. 


WILLIAM A. AIKEN, 
CHARLES J. BONAPARTE, 
SILAS W. BURT, 

EDWARD CARY, 

CHARLES COLLINS, 

LUCIUS B. SWIFT, 

RICHARD H. DANA, 

JOHN W. ELA, 

WILLIAM DUDLEY FOULKE, 
RICHARD WATSON GILDER, 


EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: 

HERBERT WELSH. 


WILLIAM G. LOW, 
DORMAN B. EATON, 
WILLIAM POTTS, 
CHARLES RICHARDSON, 
SHERMAN S. ROGERS, 
CARL SCHURZ, 

EDWARD M. SHEPARD, 
MOORFIELD STOREY, 
EVERETT P. WHEELER, 


MORRILL WYMAN, JR. 

Office of the League , 

No. 54 William St., New York 

















